The Loose Canon: Blade

Every now and then I write a more-in-depth-than-usual study of a movie I consider important and influential in the evolution of Badass Cinema, a movie I believe most fans of the genre would love and all should see and have an opinion on. I call this series THE LOOSE CANON.

Before there was such a thing as Marvel Comics movies, there was BLADE.

Technically it wasn’t the first Marvel movie. It was the fourth. But nobody would’ve expected Marvel Comics to take over the movie business the way they have now. There had been the infamous flop HOWARD THE DUCK in 1986, and a few low rent b-action movies: THE PUNISHER starring Dolph Lundgren in 1989, then Albert Pyun’s DTV movie of CAPTAIN AMERICA in 1990. A Roger Corman production of FANTASTIC FOUR had been made in 1994 merely to extend the movie rights to the characters; it was never released, and the negatives have since been destroyed. I still kinda like THE PUNISHER, but until BLADE came along in 1998 none of these really connected with audiences, and there was no reason to think they would. James Cameron and Golan & Globus had an equal amount of success in trying to make a Spider-man movie, and Marvel had gone bankrupt.

Let’s be honest, most of us never heard of a Blade before the movie. He came from the ’70s series Tomb of Dracula, part of a team of Dracula-hunters made up of descendants of Mina Harker, Abraham Van Helsing and Dracula himself. He wore a red leather jacket and green pants and spoke what creator Marv Wolfman later admitted was “cliche ‘Marvel Black’ dialogue.” But screenwriter David S. Goyer was a fan of the character when New Line Cinema, inspired by the success of FRIDAY, wanted to do a black super hero movie.

At the time it was easier to compare to other vampire movies. Anne Rice style romantic bloodsuckers had dominated the image of the subgenre since at least the movie version of INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE in 1994, and BLADE was part of a pushback that included FROM DUSK TILL DAWN two years before and John Carpenter’s VAMPIRES two months after, all reminding audiences how much fun these creatures could be as vicious monsters that need to be exterminated. Each has their own version of the rules and their own leather-clad hunters with weapons made from silver, garlic, holy water or wood, but only BLADE (and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, then two seasons in) treated it as an opportunity for martial arts.

That’s one reason Wesley Snipes was uniquely qualified for the role. Goyer originally wrote it for LL Cool J. When the script turned out to be more expensive than planned they figured only Laurence Fishburne, Snipes or Denzel Washington could justify the budget. Denzel never responded, but Wesley did.

I like all of those other actors but I can’t imagine any of them would’ve made a movie this great, because none of them are black belts. Snipes was a legitimate dramatic actor who had been in the Broadway play Execution of Justice (about the assassination of Harvey Milk), been a leading man for Spike Lee and won best actor at the Venice Film Festival for ONE NIGHT STAND. But between PASSENGER 57, DROP ZONE, DEMOLITION MAN, MONEY TRAIN and U.S. MARSHALS it was also safe to call him an action star. He brought along his skills in Shotokan karate, Hapkido, Capoeira, kung fu and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, allowing for exciting fight scenes with a wide variety of finishing moves for the dozens of vampires he turns to bones and ashes.

I don’t think Snipes gets enough credit for one of the best ever acting performances as a super hero. Through careful movements and poses, but with subdued emotions and relatively little dialogue, he creates an iconic, larger than life figure like no other on screen. With the swagger of John Shaft and the grim demeanor of a bodyguard, he can be fun without cracking jokes. He’ll slink down from above like a ninja, flap his leather duster behind him like a cape, spin and sheathe his sword to punctuate a good line, and occasionally flash a toothy smile just to fuck with his enemies.

Blade is in his own bubble enough to pull a machine gun on a crowded sidewalk. When cops have the nerve to shoot at him he asks “Motherfucker are you out of your damn mind?!” Traditionally that’s the question asked of the guy walking around in broad daylight with a sword on his back, not by him.

One thing I think is really special about Snipes as Blade is his posing. I can’t think of an actor who’s ever approached his level of standing, leaning, cocking his head, turning, crouching or swinging a sword like he would if he was a drawing. It’s as if every time he stops moving he’s already consulted a cover artist about the coolest looking way to do it.

There have been many great actors who have played super heroes, and usually they try to bring humanity and a little naturalism to fill out the cartoon drawings. Batman or Iron Man might do a cool pose while in costume, but they usually have the masks off and then the filmmakers want us to learn about their psychology, what they’re going through. Not Blade. He doesn’t have the luxury of out-of-mask time. The closest he comes to talking about his feelings is to admit that he and his father figure Whistler (Kris Kristofferson, FIRE DOWN BELOW) “have a good arrangement.” (And then, “He makes the weapons. I use ’em.”) His most emotionally vulnerable moment is conveyed to us not through words or expressions, but through editing. A flash of Blade’s birth while he’s rescuing hematologist Karen (N’Bushe Wright, DEAD PRESIDENTS) from a vampire bite tells us that she reminds him of his mother. Minimal dialogue with Whistler tells us that keeping her alive is a violation of his usual rules. But they don’t waste time arguing about it.

I like these sort of extreme characters who you automatically like, and then they proceed to not behave like they’re supposed to. For example, Blade lets Karen go, then suddenly shows up in her apartment when she’s being attacked, and it pisses her off because she realizes he was using her as bait. “Get over it,” he says. He has all of humans’ strengths, none of their etiquette.

With Karen comes the possibility of a cure. This is scary to Blade because clearly he’s become entrenched in his ways here. “This ain’t exactly the March of Dimes,” but he has a tried and true method of following vampire migration patterns, knowing how to track them to their safe houses, even smell them, and read their glyphs. He has his headquarters, his vehicles (a motorcycle and a badass matte black 1968 Dodge Charger), his mentor/weapon maker, his ever-evolving weaponry, his techniques of keeping his vampirism in check (including a friend in an herb shop who gets him his garlic and gives him a pound and a hug – I always wonder what that dude’s story is. Underrated character.). That’s another reason this stands out from super hero movies: he already has everything going from the beginning. It’s not how he got started. It’s how he might finish.

This is a strong argument for skipping origin stories. The fun is in working backwards, piecing together who the hell this guy is, what kind of operation he has going. Blade is one of the most obscure comic book characters to ever get his own movie, so some would believe you’d have to show his beginnings. Fuck that. He has one of my favorite character introductions ever in a movie because he’s fully formed. He’s already a legend. You see it not only on the terrified faces of the vampires when they first see him, but in his attitude. He has nothing to prove. Just look at him!

Sam Raimi (after THE QUICK AND THE DEAD I guess?) and David Fincher (after doing SEVEN but before it was released) were among the directors attached to the movie at various points, but Stephen Norrington got the job on the basis of stretching his budget on DEATH MACHINE. Norrington (whose filmography has been tragically short following the disaster of THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN) gives us an electronic dance music Marvel Comics vampire martial arts movie of surprising taste and tonal precision. Mark Isham’s ominous score bleeds in under red New Line Cinema logo, red on black credits, grainy flashes of Blade’s bloody, traumatic birth to a bitten mother (Sanaa Lathan, DRIVE [the Mark Dacascos one]), and then time lapse photography looking down on a city moving from day into night. This evil take on KOYAANISQATSI might look like music video style-for-style’s-sake, but consider that it reflects an ageless vampire’s perspective of time and of puny human cogs wasting away their days doing busy work.

In classic vampire movie tradition the story begins with a vampire (Traci Lords, INTENT TO KILL) pretending to be a regular human, luring a horny dude (Kenneth Johnson, Sons of Anarchy) to be bitten. These vampires have the gall to throw a rave with human blood spraying from the ceiling sprinklers (a huge one-upping of Carrie’s prom) with this poor chump being the one human in attendance. (Surprise!) But just as they’ve revealed themselves, surrounded him, hissed at him, knocked him to the ground and beaten him he crawls and slithers across the floor, through mobs of dancers covered head to toe in blood, and at the edge of the dance floor he reaches his hand out to a clean black boot.

And we know that’s him. The boogie man. The I Am Legend. After showing his feet, we get a pan up just from his chest to his neck, and still no face until the gooey mob of vamps whisper in shock, “Is it him?” and “It’s him” and “It’s the Daywalker.” The DJ has stopped the music. Quinn (Donal Logue, METRO) has interrupted his combination makeout/blow job. And the camera is behind the dancers as they fearfully back away, splitting apart far enough to give us our first look at Blade, shades on, head down. In slow motion he pulls his jacket open, like a gunslinger moving his duster to show his gun. But Blade is showing his stakes. He smiles as he steps toward them in slow motion.

This is the famous scene that establishes the BLADE action style. They start running at him and the dance music starts and it’s about four minutes of slicing, stabbing, shooting, kicking, punching, flipping, many of his moves sending vampires flying ten feet across the room and slamming into walls or railings. How do you know it’s a real martial arts movie? Because as soon as the fight starts some lady grabs two hooks and runs at him screaming and swinging. Most of the dancers run away in terror, and later the Vampire Council say they “don’t have an exact count” of how many he killed in that club, but I count 21.

So he’s written a real fight movie, and some notable martial artists show up. Bruce Lee’s daughter Shannon has a cameo, Dan Inosanto’s daughter Diana Lee Inosanto does some stunts. Gerald Okamura (SAMURAI COP) plays one of the vampire family leaders. Chuck Jeffreys (HONOR AND GLORY, RAGE, SUPERFIGHTS) and Simon Rhee (BEST OF THE BEST) are henchvampires. Jeff Imada (RAPID FIRE, THEY LIVE, DEATH WARRANT) is the stunt coordinator. The little girl vampire who later pretends to need help and then kicks the shit out of Blade is Eboni Adams, a karate prodigy from Memphis.

After that opening battle, Blade leaves the one human alive but whimpering, next to Quinn, who’s nailed into the wall and on fire, just before the police arrive with two firefighters. I love how the lead officer looks around in disgust before exasperatedly saying “Put him out.” Like they had to be told to put out the fire on a burning man. Like they might not have done it otherwise. For all we know these are all familiars, stooges of the vampires, waiting for their orders.

(Side note: Think about that guy who just wanted to spend the night with Traci Lords, and then saw all this happen. The guy who calls his dick “my heatseaker” and wears a douchey backwards hat. Maybe this night changed his life. If not, imagine how insufferable he must be telling this story all the time!)

Now, here’s the thing about BLADE. That is an incredible opening action scene. Nobody going to this movie expected it to open with a slam dunk/grand slam like that, and it was exhilarating. I will always treasure the memory of going to see this on opening night just hoping for some cheesy fun like MORTAL KOMBAT or something, and then getting this. It was a rare laughing, cheering, blown away audience experience.

So Norrington has knocked us on our ass with this Bloodbath massacre sequence, the dance beats have stopped, the cops have come to clean up the mess, Blade slinks out a basement window and disappears down an alley. Now we know it’s time to settle down, catch our breath, and meet the protagonists of the movie, the normal people who will be our surrogates into this world, right? It looks like it’s these people at the hospital, you got Karen and you got her medical examiner ex-boyfriend (Tim Guinee, also in VAMPIRES) and they’re looking at the charred corpse of Quinn, and discussing their relati– HOLY SHIT THE BURNT-TO-A-CRISP BODY JUMPS UP AND STARTS CHEWING THE GUY’S NECK OFF AND BLADE IS HERE WITH A GUN AND THE COPS ARE SHOOTING AT HIM AND QUINN JUMPS OUT A WINDOW AND CRASHES THROUGH THE ROOF OF AN AMBULANCE AND BLADE GRABS KAREN AND JUMPS OUT THE WINDOW ONTO ANOTHER ROOFTOP and it was not even three minutes into the quiet part before oh shit it’s on again. In case you thought this wasn’t BLADE, but some ordinary movie that fucks around. BLADE doesn’t fuck around.

The villain, Deacon Frost, is played by Stephen Dorff, who unlike Snipes is not a martial artist in my opinion. Jet Li was reportedly cast as this character at one time, but decided to do LETHAL WEAPON 4 instead. Snipes vs. Li would’ve been a good climax, but Li (who was not very comfortable in English at that time) would not have been able to match what Dorff brings to the character.

Frost stands out among Marvel super villains, so much so that I never even thought of him as one until just now. Yes, he has an apocalyptic scheme that involves digging up ancient secrets and kidnapping good guys to use their blood to resurrect an evil god that will turn all the humans into vampires. And yes, he’s so evil that he fucks Blade’s (previously thought to be dead) mom and acts like he wants to be his cool step-dad, even calling him “buddy.” That’s an arguably even more upsetting development than the revelation that he’s the actual father of Blade’s vampire half. But most of this comes out of a world view that makes him seem like a bit of an underdog within his world. The council of tribal elders are some old fuddy duddies resistant to change, afraid of his vision.

Frost is militant in his belief that vampires should be able to congregate and have fun together. The elders are against it because they have treaties with the humans. But Frost makes a pretty good point: “These people are our food!” It’s like if we had a treaty with cows. And were being hunted by a really badass half man, half cow. All of their strengths (milk, methane) none of their weaknesses (tippability).

The elders don’t like Frost because he’s rocking the boat too much, but also because he’s a young punk who listens to electronic dance music and has a 5 o’clock shadow and looks like that guy from S.F.W. but most of all because he was bit into a vampire, not born. They only like pure bloods. They’re old school racist. On the vampire scale he’s young and progressive.

There are plenty of memorable supporting vampires too. The best is Quinn, the arrogant asshole who thinks he’s hotter shit than Frost seems to think he is. Then you got Udo Kier as Dragonetti, surely cast as a reference to being Andy Warhol’s Dracula, but who better to be, like, the president of vampires? There’s a great scene where Frost and his intimidating girlfriend Mercury (Arly Jover, THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO) wear sunblock and motorcycle helmets to go into the daylight, pull Dragonetti’s fangs out and hold hands while they watch him melt in the sunrise. It’s filmed like a beautiful romantic scene. Again, it kinda makes you like Frost.

Mercury doesn’t have alot of dialogue, but she does spontaneously bite the bloody stump when Quinn gets his hand cut off.

There’s also a very small part with a weirdo henchman named Crease who picks up Blade’s sword and giggles “I got his pigsticker,” not knowing it has a safety system that’s about to take his hand off, and then that his friends will laugh at him, like the guy in ROAD WARRIOR that loses his fingers trying to catch the boomerang. Only on this viewing did I figure out that that’s Matt Schulze, who played Vince in THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS parts 1 and 5 and the villain Seagal’s OUT OF REACH. He also plays the much bigger part of Chupa in BLADE II, and has said that he didn’t tell them when he auditioned that he was in the first one.

But the best supporting character is on the human side, it’s Blade’s father figure, Whistler. I read on the internet that the character was created for an episode of a crappy Spider-man cartoon:

But then I found out he was created for the movie, and Marvel didn’t realize that when they put him in the cartoon and had to pay Goyer a bunch of money.

(Is that Blade supposed to be white? I can’t tell for sure. He does have a light saber, I know that much.)

Casting Kristofferson as this crusty, coughing soldier in the war on suckheads was a great move. It’s a character that really capitalizes on both sides of Kristofferson’s persona, the earthy redneck and the wise poet. He’s got a vulgar, fuck all y’all attitude while truly caring about Blade, giving him good advice and sacrificing his life (give or take) for the good fight. And his froggy voice makes for A+ one-liner delivery when he crashes through a wall with a bunch of guns and croaks “Catch you fuckers at a bad time?”

Snipes even strikes a cool pose while talking to the director on set.

By the way, that scene – where Blade is literally nailed to the wall and starts laughing because he knows that Whistler is about to show up and kick ass – is a trademark Goyer trick. He likes to have the characters be up to something without the audience being in on it yet (see also: Gordon faking his death in THE DARK KNIGHT, Blade already knowing Scud is going to betray him in BLADE II and already having a bomb implanted in him, Nicky Fury having a robot duplicate of himself in NICK FURY: AGENT OF SHIELD).

To me there’s only one aspect of the movie that dates poorly (besides the pitched-up voice and farting of the obese librarian Pearl, a part I never liked), and that’s some of the digital effects. They were kinda low budget and unfinished looking at the time, and now there’s this one shot of blood dripping that practically looks like an animated cutout. Luckily Norrington was wise enough to keep the amount of digital imagery down compared to, say, fellow ’90s New Line Cinema horror-action movies like MORTAL KOMBAT and SPAWN, even changing the ending to leave out a questionable CGI Blood God. The “ashings” of vampires are simple enough to hold up okay, and the two real showstoppers (Frost getting cut in half and the instances of vampires puffing up and exploding from the anti-coagulent drug) are imaginative enough in concept to make up for any shortcomings in realism.

Even the dance music soundtrack stands the test of time. It seems like the tracks were legitimately chosen for their mood and energy, not their potential to sell CDs or promote artists from affiliated labels. I think the soundtrack works really well, and not even in a MORTAL KOMBAT campy kind of way. (Trivia: The song “Playing With Fire” by Expansion Union contains a sample of “Shiftee,” performed by Onyx, a group that includes Sticky Fingaz, a.k.a. Kirk “Sticky” Jones, who played Blade in the TV series.)

It’s also worth noting that BLADE predates THE MATRIX, which shares its fetish for black leather, cool shades and kinetic kung fu scenes set to electronic dance music. BLADE even has a slow motion CGI bullet dodge that’s like a poor man’s bullet time. And when it comes down to it the subtext is pretty similar too, maybe mixed with a little THEY LIVE. “The world you live in” (the Matrix) “is just a sugar-coated topping. There is another world beneath it: the real world.” In that world elites (vampires) who see us as cattle control things – “They’ve got their claws into everything. Politics, finance, real estate. They already own half of downtown.” And they’re aided by “familiars,” cops or suck-ups who pathetically do the vampires’ bidding in hopes that they’ll some day become one of them. Blade has little pity for these sellouts. When a black cop begs, “Please, I just work for them!” he thinks about what happened to Whistler and shoots him dead.

But there’s one thing that makes a major difference in that symbolism: the hero of THE MATRIX is a white middle class guy, an office drone unhappy with his fake life, sensing that there’s more out there for him. Blade doesn’t have that luxury. He’s a black man who lost his mother to the system (the vampires) and grew up on the streets.

It’s got that stuff going on underneath, but the surface is so shiny it took me years to even notice. When I think about the excitement of that first time seeing it, one of several crowdpleasing moments that comes to mind is shortly before the climactic fight, when Blade finally disposes of Quinn. Quinn has stolen his sunglasses and is wearing them as he taunts him. Blade takes a run at him and decapitates him with a wire.

When Quinn disintegrates the shades are sent spinning, and Blade reaches up and catches them in mid-air. And he holds them there dramatically for a beat before slowly lowering them to his face as the camera rotates around him 360 degrees and then he smiles and the crazy dance music kicks in as he goes to work on the other vampires.

No other super hero could get away with that. No white person period could pull it off (maybe Brian Bosworth). Few movies could treat their subjects this seriously, then do something this knowingly absurd at such a crucial moment, and only enhance the drama. It is unique to Blade’s personality that he would do something like that, and to Norrington’s style that he would give it one of the most elaborate shots in the movie. And it is the absolutely perfect thing to do.

Like Blade himself, the movie is a hybrid of different types that combine to form one unique, powerful force. It’s one of the greats of the comic book genre, the vampire genre and the action genre. No matter how old it gets, no matter how many great sequels it has (exactly one), BLADE, to me, always earns those sunglasses.

VERN has been reviewing movies since 1999 and is the author of the books SEAGALOGY: A STUDY OF THE ASS-KICKING FILMS OF STEVEN SEAGAL, YIPPEE KI-YAY MOVIEGOER!: WRITINGS ON BRUCE WILLIS, BADASS CINEMA AND OTHER IMPORTANT TOPICS and NIKETOWN: A NOVEL. His horror-action novel WORM ON A HOOK will arrive later this year.

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I’ve raved enough about this movie already, I don’t think I have too much to add here.

I’d like to pick up on one thing though:

“Luckily Norrington was wise enough to keep the amount of digital imagery down compared to, say, fellow ’90s New Line Cinema horror-action movies like MORTAL KOMBAT and SPAWN, even changing the ending to leave out a questionable CGI Blood God.”

See, the version of BLADE that I’m familiar with – the only version that I know of – has full-on CGI blood God. Is there another version of it that doesn’t?

Yup this one is pretty great and seeing it opening night back in ’98 it felt so damn fresh and exciting. Then Matrix came out like a half-year later and it really felt like a new dawn of excellent badass action cinema. Then the shaky-cam revolution came in almost immediatly after the one-two-punch wowness of Blade and Matrix.

Shame no one gives this one the credit it deserves for assisting in jump-kicking the current superhero boom

I always thought the first half was great and the second half was garbage, but for the life of me I can’t think of why I felt that way except that the CGI was bad and the idea of vampire sunblock pissed me off inordinately. (Did they put it on their eyeballs? In between their hair follicles? On their tongues?) I also haven’t watched it in at least 10 years so I guess it’s time to revisit it now that it’s in the Canon.

When I think of Blade, I often also think of Spiderman. The reason is that I feel like universally Spiderman 2 is considered better than Spiderman the same way Blade II is considered better than Blade. However, I am from the opinion that Spiderman II isn’t that great the same way Blade II isn’t that great.

Reading this transported me back to that day where my buddy and I caught this at a matinee on opening day. Like you, we went in expecting something corny but fun for a couple of hours. Then that opening action sequence kicked our asses and we knew we were in for something special. Thanks for bringing the memory of that magic back.

Great review, Vern! It’s been years since I watched Blade, although I’ve seen it at least a dozen times. I’m not sure until reading your review that I’d ever fully connected the dots with the racial symbolism. But I think you’re 100% right. Your comparing and contrasting it with the Matrix was really great, especially as they were only a year apart and are contemporaries in many ways. I watched both movies a ton, particularly on DVD, since I was in middle school when they came out.

I always thought the final fight scene was a little anti-climactic especially since it was so short. But it sounds like a forced production choice, as their other option would’ve been a long, bad CGI scene.

I was a vampire killer
I was born to fight their kind
Always caught those fuckers at bad times
I drove a Mustang and my right knee has a brace
I made the weapons Blade used to wipe out their race
And when I got bit he said that I should check out
But I am still about

I’ve been wanting to do a Loose Canon on BLADE for a long time because it’s a movie I love and I feel like many people I know will give credit to the also great BLADE II but not as much to the first one. The last time I watched BLADE a year or two ago I took extensive notes, and then didn’t get to writing it up for some reason. After re-watching it and writing this I found those notes and pulled a couple things from them, so in a way this piece was years in the making. I bring that up to say don’t expect a new piece on BLADE II tomorrow, but I definitely plan to revisit it very soon.

When The Matrix came out, I was one of those teenagers who was automatically suspicious of something popular, so I liked to unfavorably compare it to Blade. I also used to tell people that Pi and Dark City were so much better than The Matrix. I’ve since softened on the Wachowski’s opus. Blade I and II are still a couple of my favorite superhero flicks. Watching the blood bath scene in movie theaters was an absolute treat and one of my favorite moviegoing experiences as well. Like Deacon Frost, I learned not to underestimate Wesley Snipes.

I love the sprinklers full of blood. These shitbag vampire clubber are so decadent. It’s like a trendy human club dousing its patrons in Cristal champagne. Actually, I’m surprised that hasn’t happened yet.

An excellent movie with one memorable scene, character, moment, line after another. Definitely functioned as a proof of concept for this recent glut of super hero movies, and VERY few of them have ever come close to being this fun. All three movies are a delight in their own way, but the original is the gold standard.
Just want to give a little love for two of my favorite bits of dialog: “Damn it Frost! I AM TALKING TO YOOOOO!!” and “Just do it. OLD MAN.” God do I love this movie. Thanks, Vern!

Part 3 is definitely overdue for a revisit. It is a really fun movie, only let down by a disappointing Dracula. But it has all every other sorts of fun:

*The vampire dogs are fun.
*Great performances from both Parker Posey and Ryan Reynolds. Reynolds is far funnier here than in Deadpool ( the jokes are better as well). Not to forget: Higgins as the wonderfully sleazy populist psychiatrist.
* The action sequences at the end gives me a boner every time I watch it
*Quite some terrifying and highly atmospheric stalking sequences in which most of the Nightstalkers are brutally murdered. Quite a horrific scena as juxtaposed to the fun lightheatrted moments just a few scenes back.

There is much more here than I can think of. It is a fun watch. And I think people should be grateful. In these Blade-less ages one must be thankful for what we have

Paul- do you have some sort of bootleg version of BLADE or what? Cause the Blood God bits are definetely in the deleted scenes, not in the final film. Could you post a link to the version you have, because it would be awesome to know if such a version had that stuff in it.

Yeah, Paul. The German (=European) version doesn’t have a tornado either.

Anyway, as much as I love this detailed write-up, I never really liked this movie. The opening is awesome (It should also be noted that the track that plays during Blade’s first fight was by Junkie XL and according to him in arecent interview, hearing his music for the first time in a movie, made him want to learn how to write an actual score.) and I acknowledge it’s pre-Matrixness (It even has a similar scene of someone jumping from house to house!), but after Udo Kier explodes, the whole movie goes downhill IMO.

And yes, I have to agree with Mr M. on the sunblock thing. That shit never made sense to me, since I can’t believe that a sunblocker exists, that really blocks the sun and all UV rays like this (And that comes from someone who spent a whole week on Ibiza and managed to return as pale as he arrived!). But well, comic book fantasy and shit. Let’s just say they they invented some vampire strength one.

BTW, the Spider-Man cartoon was for its time not that shitty. They had some good stories, that often spread over 5 or 6 episodes. Yeah, the animation was a little stiff and they had to obey some laughable censorship (Like “no real guns”, which made the cops shoot with lasers and I’m sure that’s where Blade’s lightsaber came from) and Blade was more…tanned than black, but…I forgot what I wanted to say.

Man, that’s weird about the tornado thing. Honestly it’s not something that I particularly mind anyway, but it’s definitely in there. And as to whether or not I have a bootleg copy – it’s the same as I recall from the cinema (although my memory may be “off” on that one), so I bloody hope not!

As to BLADE 3…

“Great performances from both Parker Posey and Ryan Reynolds. Reynolds is far funnier here than in Deadpool ( the jokes are better as well).”

No. No. No. No. No. Nonononono. Noooo. And, did I mention, NO!

I’ve not written up my thoughts on DEADPOOL yet (will do so asap) but here are just some of the many, many reasons why BLADE 3 makes me want to strangle a kitten.

1) Ryan Reynolds’ misogynist fratboy douchebag protagonist. (Yep, he’s essentially put into the protagonist role, because….)
2) Wes Snipes could not give two shits about this movie. If what I’ve read is true, he barely turned up on set, and it shows. They would’ve done better to cast L L Cool J in this one than have Wes reprise his role.
3) Kris Kristofferson does nothing either. He looks embarassed to be there (and he should).
4) I’ve heard that the dialogue in DIE HARD 5 is nothing but father-and-son cliches. Did it get that idea from BLADE 3’s Whistler-Blade scenes?
5) Can’t even remember who the girl is, but the only thing I remember about her character is the bloody iPod. There’s an idea that somebody should have looked at and gone “Wait, this is too damn stupid to put on film”. I wouldn’t mind if there was anything at all to her character other than that, but… no.
6) Apparently this movie is supposed to be set in something approaching a full vampire apocalypse. Would you know it? How come the original BLADE is the only one to be able to portray an interesting vampire-centric society?
7) There’s exactly one likeable character in BLADE 3. She gets Queen Latifah’d at the end of the second act. You know how much I fucking hate that!
8) Parker Posey! You poor thing! What did they do to you? (Actually Posey is probably the best thing about this movie. Unfortunately she’s saddled with “lame vampire sidekick” as her role here.)
9) Remind me… did BLADE 3 rip off the weredog from CURSED, or was it the other way around?
10) Dracula. Oh God, Dracula. (And giant CGI Dracula. Actually, I don’t know what’s worse, the boring human form or the ridiculous CGI one.)

I mean, in a world where BURIED exists, BLADE 3 is never going to be Ryan Reynolds’ worst movie. But still… this shit is awful. Iredeemably awful. A stain upon the BLADE franchise.

“Funnier than DEADPOOL”? You fuckin’ what? The audience was laughing out loud several times during that movie. I didn’t see BLADE 3 in the cinema (thank whatever God might be out there), but I can’t imagine it provoking anything other than tortured sobbing. And if anybody was laughing, it’d be like that time when the Joker is in hysterics after Batman’s thrown him across the room and hit him repeatedly with an armoured fist. That’s the kind of laughter we’d be talking about.

Shoot – sorry, couldn’t help it. A world in which serious film fans, whose opinions I mostly respect even when I don’t agree with them, start referring to BLADE 3 as “underrated” – that’s not a world that I want to live in.

I might add that the guy who plays the villain of BLADE 3, Dominic Purcell, has a recurring villain role in the FLASH TV show where he basically plays a giant smouldering slice of ham and cheese called “Captain Cold”. He’s freakin’ hilarious in it. Give this guy some good direction, or at least put him in something where somebody who’s making it gives a shit, and he’s really entertaining. Of course the same can be said of Snipes, Kristofferson, Posey, Reynolds…

I re-watched the pilot for BLADE- THE SERIES last night and was pleasantly reminded how good it was. And if I recall correctly the series as a whole never focused on giving Blade “psychological depth” eith, which makes him work much better. But it tries more world building and more reminiscient of the first film. I don´t like Spikey Fingaz in the role. He makes no effort of making the role his own.

Shoot – I never got past the second episode unfortunately. (I say “unfortunately” because something happened in the second episode that utterly threw me and made me think this was going to be amazing.) I’ve got to revisit it.

I saw this on opening day too, it was a really fresh take on vampire action at that point, i loved it. I do prefer Blade II, but the first one’s excellent. The main reason i’m commenting, though, is that one of the times i saw Kris Kristofferson in concert (in Belfast) some drunken idiot kept trying to get Kris’ attention from the upper levels of the auditorium. Some Belfast accents can be quite…. thick, so as Kris finished a song it was understandable that he couldn’t understand the guy who kept shouting “Here Kris!! Kris! Did we catch ye at a bad time?”. Kris said “Er, sorry, what was that?” and the guy somehow thought that by shouting incoherently (“Blade! Buh-lade! Buh-laaaaade, tha movie!!”) that Mr Kristofferson might understand him. Sadly he didn’t. It was excruciating.

“It’s like if we had a treaty with cows. And were being hunted by a really badass half man, half cow. All of their strengths (milk, methane) none of their weaknesses (tippability).” Bravo, Vern. Bravo.

As to the movie, I just re-watched this a few weeks ago. It was still awesome. I vaguely remember noticing the bad CGI, but it didn’t really stand out as terrible to me. I’m sure I was just accepting it as a product of its time, but it didn’t ruin anything for me.

Not to be too nitpicky, but Dominic Purcell plays Captain Cold’s brother, Heatwave, in The Flash TV Show. Although, I had no clue that the same actors also played Dracula in Blade III, which I also did not like. I remember hating that incarnation of Dracula and thinking, for whatever reason, that he was like the Eurotrash version of the character.

I think Luke Goss (Blade II) would have been a better Deacon. European look, has twin brother for unique action/effects options and probably had dance training from his boyband background that would have helped in fight scenes.

I saw this recently for the first time in a decade and was genuinely amazed at it all over again. The cgi is really bad most of the time, but who cares when it’s not overdone and everything else is so good.

Vern, I’m surprised you didn’t talk more about Theo Van De Sande’s cinematography. It’s hands down the best shot comic book movie ever, being so carefully composed and artful. Only Constantine comes close to a comic book look. There’s a great bit on the commentary where De Sande talks about getting true blacks on film. It’s a shame he’s done both Grown Ups movies recently.

If only MJW had been cast in the TV series, that would have been gold.

BLADE is much better than BLADE II in damn near every way. Norrington just doesn’t have the luxury of being as beloved by geeks like Del Toro does especially because of that LEAGUE OF LITERARY CHARACTERS movie. Both of BLADE and BLADE II are miles ahead of BLADE: TRINITY on every level though. That movie I know has some defenders but personally it just depresses me seeing Wesley being bummed out and barely active in his own movie. Reynolds’ Hannibal King also sucked. That role should’ve been re-written for Woody and made it a bit closer in tone to the Marvel Comics version and not as hammy as Reynolds played it.

This was a great write up and reminded me of the first time I saw this. When we came out of it my dad and uncle were like “It was so bloody” and 15 year old me just smiled back at them and went “of course it was it’s a vampire movie”. It was refreshing to see more alpha vampire shit around again. People really were forgetting that these were MONSTERS first and foremost for a minute there. Even when DRACULA had come back he was playing the romantic angle but at least there was more monster there than in INTERVIEW or some bugged out shit like Abel Ferrara’s THE ADDICTION.

Movie definitely was a nice surprise I remember it came out in August cause it was a couple of weeks after my birthday and back then August was a dumping ground for crap like Wesley’s THE FAN. I did go because it was Wesley and I had seen everything from WHITE MEN CAN’T JUMP and BOILING POINT to MONEY TRAIN and U.S. MARSHALS at the cinema cause of Wes and came out happy so it felt like an obligation as a fan. Gut feeling told me it might be one of the good ones and it certainly was.

Prior to this movie I only knew Blade from issues of GHOST RIDER and MORBIUS during the Midnight Sons era. There was the NIGHTSTALKERS book from around that time too and even though I read that regularly Hannibal King stood out more than Blade. Blade was pretty one dimensional until the movie to be honest. He definitely benefited a lot from this movie it redefined him like the Adam West series did Batman at it’s time and brought him a new lease on life. It was after the movie that I finally read TOMB OF DRACULA and it was ok but nowhere close to the unbridled coolness of anything in this movie. This movie pretty much set the standard of BLADE past, present or future from 1998 and on.

I just got finished re-watching Blade earlier tonight. As well as the sequel. Interestingly, I think the first dates better than the second which is the opposite impression of what I had a few years year ago. Anyway, on a re-watch, I think Frost can come across as a compete sociopath out for his own ends. The classism/racism of the pure bloods vs. the made Vampires is definitely real, and a theme picked up on in the sequel, but Frost is extremely indifferent towards his friends. After he becomes La Magra or whatever. He says very little to his friends or girlfriend. When she asks, looking at him, “Deacon?” He simply replies, “not anymore.” He messes with Quinn quite a few times before the transformation, most obviously with pretending to cut off his arm with Blade’s sword.

He also co-opts racially charged language–telling Blade to spare him the “Uncle Tom routine” in that park scene as he holds a girl hostage while pitching that whole humans are cattle speech–to sell Blade on doing what he wants. And what he wants, we ultimately know/find out is a double cross so he can harvest Blade’s blood for his ceremony so he can become the Vampire God. And, he’s positioned into a historically rooted role of the powerful white master interested in black women. After Blade black mother’s dies, Forst ensures that she turns into a vampire and becomes a slave for his ends, making him a weird distant kind of father for Blade and gives him some relationship to Blade’s powers but Frost doesn’t ultimately care about Blade he only cares about fulfilling his own desires, which Blade’s daywalker ability provides for him. Additionally, Frost shows clear sexual interest in Karen, commenting on her skin, but gets visibly annoyed at her rebuffs, rejections, and challenges to him and what he’s selling. He casts her aside into the pit with the zombie guy, which ultimately results in his own demise, since Karen hasn’t turned yet, and her blood essentially powers up Blade so that he becomes the badass superhero.

Anyway, I haven’t yet thought hard about how to combine some of these moments into a rich full thematic interpretation on top of Vern’s groundwork, but it strikes me that quite a bit is there.

Okay. So I just took a sugar-frosted FUCK off the end of BL3DE’s dick and…it’s not as sweet as I remember. Not terrible, but it plays like a decent pilot for a TV series more than a movie. It doesn’t have BLADE’s commitment to true horror, or Snipe’s commitment to acting like he owns the role.

It’s still fun though. Triple H in full body tactical gear giving the middle finger to the desert sun in Syria kinda corrects the face-makeup-in-the-daytime error of BLADE. Blade’s intro, with the warehouse windows being blown out and a burning vampire flying through the air was nice but not as badass as the camera-pan up from Blade’s boots in the Blood Rave.

Maybe I’m biased because I could park a porky in Parker Posey, I dunno, but I still enjoy it. This is me ice-skating uphill. I’ll quit now.

I also like to ice skate uphill. No shame in admitting TRINITY. That shootout/fight at the end when Blade and the Nightstalkers assault the Vampire Inc headquarters is pretty amazing with lots of good action. Too bad we just don´t get nuff of it in this movie

The more time goes on the more I truly miss the culture of the late 90’s/early 00’s and it’s “fuck you, I’m cool” attitude, it was often cheesy, but at least it took itself seriously, there was no need for snarky meta humor to undercut everything.

I mean it’s not that I don’t like snarky meta humor (I loved DEADPOOL after all) but there’s also something to be said for willing to take yourself seriously to the point of cheese, cheese is good, people today practically worship the unironic cheese of 80’s movies but they’re overlooking the last great era of unironic cheese, the late 90’s/early 00’s, I mean after all the KING of unironic cheese is THE ROOM, which was filmed in 2002 and released in 2003.

Also, there’s a difference between taking yourself seriously and “grimdark”, something like BLADE knows to also have him grab the spinning sunglasses, to have fun, that’s different than something like BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE that thinks being serious means being dour.

Hey Vern, I don’t comment too often but I love your site. This article made me finally get around to watching Blade, so thanks a lot! Great movie with some classic moments. I know the sequels have a mixed reputation but I’m going to have to check them out now.

So I rewatched BLADE 2 the other night and it holds up slightly better than I remember. The Blood Pack appear a lot more than I thought they did, although I still wish they were more the main focus of the film. I still don’t like the “sunglasses throw” – it comes off as way more “staged” than the act of simple badassery that is Blade one-shotting Donal Logue’s character and snatching the glasses from his disintegrating face – but it doesn’t make Blade look like a cartoon either, as I’ve previously said. So I retract that.

In other respects I still have the same problem as I did before. The Scud storyline still sucks – it turns Whistler into nothing more than a “false suspect”, and detracts from Blade’s badassness. (Nothing should do that.) And I still can’t get on board with the Spiderman villains (corrupt scientist father-figure with rebellious action kids). The thing I think BLADE has going for it that really pushes it over the line into “great” is the vampire society – we see multiple layers of it, entire social structures brilliantly compressed into one-scene snapshots, etc. BLADE 2 does away with all of this. Instead we get the Green Goblin, only less shiny and with slightly less preposterous dialogue. This is not a change that I can support.

BLADE 2 is just an ok BLADE film, but it’s still a good action film. It has a lot of little touches that I really appreciate – there’s a theme of the futility of revenge running through the film that I hadn’t appreciated before (mostly, I think, because once again the Scud storyline doesn’t fit into it. Damn it, can’t we just have a version of BLADE 2 without Scud?) Now that Blade’s avenged his mother, his motives are called into question, and the introduction of Nyssa obviously complicates things even further. I like how BLADE 2 really brings this point home without compromising Blade’s essential badassery. Nomac’s death – which is fantastic, by the way – also rams this point home (in the most literal sense, as it turns out). Once he’s taken his revenge on the people he wants to get revenge on, he no longer has a reason to live. Nomac isn’t a particularly great villain – I don’t think he has any dialogue in this movie that isn’t taken from a book of “stock movie villain cliches” – but then he doesn’t talk much. He’s mostly a physical presence, and his design (all flapping jaws and lumpy tongue) is pretty cool. His best scenes, by far, are his introduction and his death.

Overall, I still like BLADE 2 on another viewing. It’s a good action movie that has some problems with its story, and a couple too many plotlines. By the standards of action movies, or even comic book movies in general, it’s above-average in many respects. Unfortunately it’s competing with the original BLADE, and it clearly does not measure up to that comparison. If it came out today, instead of fourteen years ago, I’d give it a cautious recommendation.

Forgot to mention one thing above. BLADE has lots of moments where his badassness is demonstrated through stoic humour – the moment when Blade mouths “what the fuck?” to the camera after basically cutting Deacon Frost in half with a sword and watching it do absolutely nothing to him, for example – and there’s very little of these in BLADE 2. I miss these moments. There’s definitely some character deterioration there. Again, this wouldn’t bother me without the comparison to the original BLADE, but since I have seen BLADE… it’s another little thing that the sequel misses. It doesn’t make it a bad film (it’s a good film) but it’s another reason why BLADE was so much better than its sequel.

All that being true though… saying that “BLADE is to BLADE 2 what BLADE 2 is to BLADE 3” is not even remotely close to accurate. BLADE 2 is a masterpiece compared to its sequel. The drop in quality between BLADE and BLADE 2 is nothing compared to the difference between BLADEs 2 and 3.

Sternshein – I agree. But Yen wasn’t even the weirdest “throwaway role” for me. That title had to go to Danny John-Jules, AKA “the cat” from RED DWARF, AKA Byron Lucifer from THE TOMORROW PEOPLE. In a freakin’ BLADE movie. What the heck…?

Paul: I believe that guy was in it because he’s an actor, whose job is to play different characters in various movies and television shows and things. He obviously took the other jobs you mention to pay the bills until he was able to do something to be more proud of like a small part in BLADE II. Hope this clears it up. In conclusion, you watched BLADE II again.

If a Blade Netflix series does happen let’s all hope Michael Jai White gets the call. Especially to make up for the fact that Scott Adkins isn’t playing Iron Fist like I (and I’m assuming others here) hoped.

My family had a tradition of always renting a bunch of totally not-xmas friendly movies to watch x-mas eve, and this was one of them. I still remember my mom exclaiming in despair “Merry Christmas” right after the blood shower scene at the beginning, while us kids and my Dad cheered.